Crucial and Samsung are two of the biggest names in solid-state drives. Micron,
the company behind the Crucial brand, is a giant in all things memory-related
and has decades of experience in the industry. They're not the flashiest company,
but they haven't survived this long by accident. Their products are popular
and generally regarded as reliable and value conscious. Samsung is a huge conglomerate
that lacks Micron's specialization, but their sheer size and massive manufacturing
base has given them an edge over much of the competition. All the main components
in their SSDs, the NAND Flash, controller, and firmware, are designed and manufactured
in-house, keeping potentially unreliable third parties out of their supply chain
and maximizing their own profit. With this cushion, they can undercut the competition
or invest in better technology.

The strengths of each company are evident in the two drives we're evaluating
today, the Crucial MX100 and Samsung 850 Pro. The former is positioned as the
ultimate value SSD, with an excellent dollar per byte ratio. The latter is being
pushed as the latest and greatest, the newest addition Samsung's fleet of high
performance SSDs.

The specifications don't differentiate the drives much. Both 2.5" form
factor drives models are 7 mm thick, making them compatible with more ultrabooks
than the typical 9.5 mm fare. They both have 512MB of DDR2 memory acting as
cache, and support the latest modern encryption standards. Both have lofty claims
regard regarding sequential and random performance with the 850 Pro promising
a bit more horsepower. The most interesting difference is cliam durability:
The 850 Pro boosts a longer MTBF, more than double the write endurance despite
being lower capacity, offering an astounding 10 years warranty instead of 3.

The Crucial MX100 is a 7 mm thick drive but also ships with a 9.5 mm adapter bracket. There was also a complimentary key for a copy of Acronis True Image HD 2014 included inside the box.

The MX100 is actually a tweak of an older drive in Crucial's lineup, the M550,
currently positioned as their upscale consumer SSD. The MX100 features the same
Marvell 88SS9189 controller, but it utilizes more affordable NAND Flash manufactured
with Micron's smaller 16nm process (most modern drives use 19/20nm technology).
These chips are more densely packed, but this also means fewer NAND packages
working in parallel, one of the main reasons why low capacity SSDs frequently
have less impressive performance compared to larger versions of the same model.

Effectively, they've traded reduced performance for more capacity and lower
cost  a perfectly valid strategy often employed to create a budget SSD.
The 512GB model retails for a mere US$210, making it easily the cheapest
big name SSD in the ~500GB range. 128GB and 256GB variants are available are
priced just as attractively. Despite all this, Crucial proudly proclaims that
the MX100 offers not only great value but also "unrelenting performance."

The Samsung 850 Pro, also a 7 mm thick drive.

The Samsung 850 Pro isn't a completely new drive either, powered by the same
3-core Samsung MEX controller as the 840
Pro, currently our SSD performance champion. However, its approach to
the actual NAND Flash is completely different than the MX100. Rather than scaling
down with a smaller fabrication process and trying to deal with the resulting
performance complications, they've employed what they call V-NAND, effectively
NAND arrayed in three dimensions rather than two. This allows more Flash memory
to be packed inside, freeing Samsung to use 40nm MLC chips, which is unheard
of in today's SSD climate. With superior technology, Samsung has more physical
space than their competitors to leverage into stronger performance.

Also available in 128GB, 512GB, and 1TB versions, the 850 Pro carries a healthy
price premium across the board, with the 256GB model selling for about US$190.
It's quite expensive but not unreasonable if you take into account the reliability
and performance claims. Samsung has one last ace up their sleeve: "RAPID
mode." Enabling this feature in their Magician software allows the SSD
to use up to 25% of the system's memory as an ultra-fast cache. RAMDisk users
are familiar with this concept, creating a virtual drive out of excess RAM for
frequently accessed applications, but RAPID mode does it all automatically under
the hood.